Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar Land Rover (informally JLR) is a British multinational automotive company owned by Tata Motors of India. Its principal activity is the development, manufacture and sale of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles. History The Jaguar Cars and Land Rover businesses were brought together as a single entity by Ford Motor Company in 2002. Ford had acquired Jaguar Cars in 1989 and Land Rover from BMW in 2000. In 2008 the Jaguar Land Rover company was established when Tata Motors acquired the Jaguar and Land Rover businesses from Ford. In March 2011, Jaguar Land Rover announced that it would be hiring an additional 1,500 staff at its Halewood plant, and signed over £2 billion of supply contracts with UK-based companies, to enable production of its new Range Rover Evoque model. In September 2011, the company confirmed that it would be investing £355 million in the construction of a new engine plant at the i54 business park near Wolverhampton, central England, to manufacture a family of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines. In November 2011 Jaguar Land Rover announced that it would be creating 1,000 new jobs at its Solihull plant, a 25 per cent increase in the size of the workforce at the site. In March 2012 Jaguar Land Rover announced the creation of 1,000 new jobs at its Halewood plant, and a shift to 24-hour production at the plant. In the same month, Jaguar Land Rover and the China-based carmaker Chery agreed to invest an initial US$2.78 billion in a new joint venture the activities of which will include the manufacture of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles and engines, the establishment of a research and development facility, the creation of a new automobile marque, and sales of vehicles produced by the company. Operations Jaguar Land Rover currently sells vehicles under the Jaguar and Land Rover marques. It also owns the rights to the currently dormant Daimler, Lanchester and Rover marques. The latter was acquired by Land Rover, whilst still under Ford ownership, from BMW in the aftermath of the collapse of MG Rover Group, BMW having retained ownership of the marque when it broke up Rover Group in 2000, licensing it to MG Rover as a condition of the sale of Land Rover to Ford. Jaguar Land Rover operates five principal manufacturing and R&D facilities: * Gaydon (formerly RAF Gaydon, BL Technology, Rover Group and then the Land Rover engineering site) * Whitley (formerly the Chrysler UK engineering site, then the Jaguar cars engineering site) * Solihull (formerly Rover Cars and then Land Rover production site) * Castle Bromwich (formerly British Leyland and then Jaguar Cars production site) * Halewood (formerly Ford of Britain production site, then Jaguar and now a Land Rover production site) Sales In the year ended 31 March 2011, Jaguar Land Rover sold a total of 240,905 units, of which 189,087 were Land Rovers and 51,818 were Jaguars. In that period 24.1% of sales were in the United Kingdom, 22% in Europe (ex. the United Kingdom and Russia), 20.9% in North America, 12% in China, 4.9% in Russia and 15.9% in the rest of the world. References External links *Jaguar Land Rover official website *Current JLR stories in the Birmingham Post Category:Motor vehicle manufacturers of the United Kingdom Category:Jaguar Category:Land Rover Category:Jaguar Land Rover Category:Tata Group Category:subsidiaries Category:Companies of the United Kingdom